Heart of Oak: A Three-Stranded Yarn, vol. 3

by William Clark Russell

The crew were now occupied in coiling away the rigging and clearing up the decks, and I had an opportunity of viewing them. All were white men; there were eight, together with a cook and a boy to wait upon us aft, making with captain and mate twelve of a company, which was plenty. Cliffe had told me he would not ship a certificated second mate; the man who went as boatswain would relieve the mate and stand a watch. That man was a wiry, middle-aged seaman; he wore a spread of grey whisker scissors-trimmed, close to his face, and dark eager eyes which he rolled quickly as a monkey; he sang out briskly, and sprang about the decks. Little Captain Cliffe, observing that I watched the man, came and stood beside me and spoke up softly to my ear:

'I engaged that chap because of his knowledge of the ice. He told me he was seven years whaling in the Pacific and Southern oceans. He is the most wonderful jumper I ever heard of.'

'So old as he is?'

'Forty-five or thereabouts. Men of that sort soon lose the reckoning of their birth. I don't allow their mothers ever enter 'em. They're always the age that suits 'em to be. But look what a life it is, sir! the iron it will put into a young 'un's hair! the kinks it'll run into a young 'un's back! All the hard life and the bad food works out through a man's pores after a few years, bows him down, and hardens in his face with a crust of years. He's a marvellous jumper that, sir. Tell ye what he did—and it astonished me—there was a horse and trap standing close beside where we were talking. He turns on a sudden and sings out, "Captain, did yer ever see this done?" and putting his feet together and clenching his fists he bent his knees, let go of the ground like and shot as a bolt, clearing the horse till you could see half the length of his own legs of blue sky 'twixt his feet and the animal's back.'

He gazed up at me, blinking and grinning, and added, 'I allow, should it come to any awkward climbing jobs, we'll find that covey handy.'

I lingered a little to watch the brig and the coast. The swell was coming straight out of the wide sea, but the breeze still followed fiery and splendid with the light of that land; the little ship bowed softly; the long heave under the bows did not stop her; she floated with erect spars, her yards square, the canvas breathing like human breasts as her bowsprit rose and fell; yet a glance astern showed me she was already whitening the water.

At every look, the high land, purple and hard in that noontide brilliance, yielded new features. It was towering now on to Hont Bay, with a trend which made a mighty shoulder of it as it sounded towards Simon's Town and the Cape of Good Hope: the towering terraces were on our port quarter with Robben Island to starboard, and ahead was the glittering breast of the Atlantic with the sea-line hard-carved against the faint silvery blue. I looked for a sail, but nothing broke that measureless run of horizon; the junction of air and water had a wild loveliness, indescribable, thanks perhaps to the violet of the brine that washed the light azure; though the fear and mystery of beauty I found in it then doubtless came of the thought of what lay hidden from me hundreds of leagues deep beyond that slope of airy silver. Had we been a ship of ancient explorers the field of ocean could not have shown more barren than my eyes, exploring its recesses under the sharp of my hand, found it.

Some seamen came aft to spread an awning. They eyed me askew; of course they knew the brig's mission, and perhaps thought me a little mad; but it would be all one to them; there is worse to be suffered at sea than a cruise off the Horn in the midsummer of this side on such wages as they had signed for, in a tight well-built brig. In fact, they rolled about their work with a sort of rollicking carriage that made one reckon they had entered upon the voyage with jolly hearts as on a yachting jaunt, secure from all danger and dirt of cargo; only it was as likely they'd come on board a little merry with Jack's custom of farewell.

I now went below to see to my berth and arrange my traps; but came to a halt at the cabin table, to lean upon it and think. This interior was wholly unlike the 'Lady Emma's'; yet the skylight, the lockers, and several trifling details of cabin furniture brought to my recollection that day in the Thames when I had said good-bye to Marie in her cabin, alone. What had been her sufferings since? If she was in the hull she had been imprisoned at this date for five months, and by the time we got to her six! For six months she would have been locked up in a motionless hulk, high perched upon a savage island, heavily faced with ice, with a thunder of surf far down for ever in her ear, and always the same white, desolate, fierce prospect of frozen cliffs and rolling ocean. Would it not have killed her? I clasped my hands in the torment of the thought. Should I be making this voyage to a remote ice-girt island merely to enter the wreck and behold the remains of my Marie as I had looked into that coffin in Cape Town beholding another?

I passed into my own berth, a small but comfortable box, and after busying myself for half an hour, during which I had recalled my mind to something of its former composure, I re-entered the cabin and found the table laid for dinner. The little sea parlour looked cheerful with this hospitable setting. The heel of a windsail buzzed in the skylight. There had happened a little shift of wind whilst I was below, for the brig leaned over and I heard a smart hissing—the seething of foam sliding past; it was as cooling a noise as the sound of a hard shower of rain on a dusty August day at home.